Kingdom Hearts 2 Four -> Fourteen

Now a good chunk of the game is behind me, so here's what I think so far:

• Antiseptic. That word keeps popping up in my head as I go through the motions on each of the themed worlds. It feels as if a certain something is missing from the formula here, and it's missing in most of the worlds. It feels like they put all of their energy into recreating the characters and environs from a visual standpoint, but neglected to capture the essence. Almost... soulless, really, which is definitely ironic in this context.
• The visuals really are astounding. I'm continually impressed by the vibrant use of color, sharply defined characters, and just overall attention to detail. I haven't played God of War since I got my HDTV, but I can fairly easily say this is the most attractive game I've played on my PS2 in recent memory. They need to sell their voice-matching software as middleware -- hell, Ghost Recon is "next generation" and doesn't look this good in how the characters express themselves.
  
• This game is RPG-on-rails. I feel like it's an RPG in as few ways as possible, just so that people in Japan will buy it. There's no exploration, barely any NPC interaction outside of cutscenes, and (so far anyway) almost no use for magic. KH2 would be better served as an action-adventure rather than an action-RPG, since the -adventure would bring with it exploration and puzzle solving, and remove some of the tedium (ideally).
• Along that same vein, it seems as though developing Chain of Memories sapped some of the creative juices that were flowing in the original Kingdom Hearts. Chain was very much point-A to point-B with repetitive battles that seemed more like an aside than they did an integral part of the game. KH2 has been very similar to this, and battles are more going through the motions than doing something engaging and interesting. That's not to say there haven't been some creative sparks thus far, but they're few and far between.
• The new battle system in KH2, the Drive system, comes off as half-baked at best, crippled at worst. For much of the early part of the game, there's so little opportunity to use them that you may as well not have the Drives. Hell, its as if the designers really don't want me to use the new feature. Some levels refuse you the option of using the Drive by either putting you by yourself (Drives require at least Donald, Goofy, or both of them to execute) or blatantly removing the option for a section or entire world, as the case may be.
  
• Speaking of the battle system, it's interesting to see how other successful action games have added to the KH setup -- and in a good way, no less. The "Reaction" button (triangle) is used mid-battle in a myriad of ways, from dodging to specialized attacks to counters. Against bosses they often end up feeling like God of War and it's rip-off-the-medusa's-head button mashing. When in a crowded fight with Heartless or Nobodies, it's much like Genji and it's reactive crowd-clearing attacks. Overall it serves to spice up what would otherwise be a fight that screams for a turbo button.
  
• The substitute voice acting is really quite good so far. They were even able to pull off Eddie Murphy and Johnny Depp -- this bodes well for Tigger. C'mon! Don't screw up the Hundred Acre Wood!
• A lot of the music is coming across as rather cheap MIDI synth, the worst example of which thus far has to be the battle music on the Pirates of the Carribean world. I thought these games came on DVD... can't they spare a megabyte or two for a compressed mp3 or something?

I'm trying to stay away from mentioning too many specifics, since the game did just come out this week and I wouldn't want to spoil stuff for those that just haven't gotten around to playing it as yet. Know this, though: the best part of the game thus far was the tail end of the opening section. It had more impact than anything that has happened since, and unfortunately that's not saying much. All this negativity aside, I'm still enjoying KH2. More later in the week, as I draw nearer to finishing the game.